Contempt Quotes

There are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contempt? Have you not thought that you have some duties toward them, that you can aid them in leading better lives?

Religious believers of the world, you are free to continue to debate the simple, narrow question that divides you from atheists, but you have no right, in so doing, to treat the Humanists of the world with contempt. You owe them a deep debt of gratitude, for not only have they shed much light on a naturally dark world but they have very probably helped civilize your own specific religion.

I am often accused of expressing contempt and despising religious people. I don’t despise religious people, I despise what they stand for. I like, I like to quote the British journalist Johann Hari [?], who said, ‘I have no contempt for you,’ sorry, ‘I have so much respect for you, that I cannot respect your ridiculous ideas.

Richard Dawkins, in The Hypocrisy of Richard Dawkins - Reasons for God

To be remembered after we are dead, is but a poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless. Herein is not only a great vanity, but a great contempt of God's gifts, that the sweetness of man's breath, being a good gift of God, should be willfully corrupted by this stinking smoke.

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare — I have no use for him, either.

One may call the world a myth , in which bodies and things are visible, but souls and minds hidden. Besides, to wish to teach the whole truth about the Gods to all produces contempt in the foolish, because they cannot understand, and lack of zeal in the good, whereas to conceal the truth by myths prevents the contempt of the foolish, and compels the good to practice philosophy.

III. Concerning myths; that they are divine, and why.

contempt for an assailant is best shown by bravery in action.

Book VI, 6.34-[9]

"Disdain is the privilege of those who, like us, have been assured by reflection of their superiority to their adversary. And where the chances are the same, knowledge fortifies courage by the contempt which is its consequence, its trust being placed, not in hope, which is the prop of the desperate, but in a judgment grounded upon existing resources, whose anticipations are more to be depended upon."

It is with life just as with swimming; that man is the most expert who is the most disengaged from all encumbrances. Apologia; seu, Pro Se de Magia (Apologia; or, A Discourse on Magic), ch. 21; p. 268.

Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of contempt for women’s bodies.

The cover pirated the pictures on the Southern pamphlet and headlined a story whose title, “Invasion from Infinity!,” bore witness to a brash disdain of doing right as much as of blithe contempt for having been proved wrong.

We cannot and we will not negotiate with terrorists. We have nothing but contempt for them. To conciliate differences with these people without them changing their objectives is to condemn our Republic to ultimate strangulation and death.

Without their tiger gods, the tribe declined into fear and melancholy and begged her to allow them to worship her instead, only to be rejected with contempt; for what good would their worship do her? she asked. It had done nothing for the tigers.

I can by no means approve the scurrility and contempt with which the Romanists have often been treated. I dare not rail at, or despise, any man: much less those who profess to believe in the same Master. But I pity them much; having the same assurance, that Jesus is the Christ, and that no Romanist can expect to be saved, according to the terms of his covenant.

Ah, there is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a self-righteous being. The one is all contempt: the other, all pity.

When he [Brezhnev] succeeded Khrushchev, he was still a vigorous politician who expected to make the Party and government work more effectively...But his General Secretaryship had turned into a ceremonial reign that had brought communism into its deepest contempt since 1917.